On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 4:23 AM, Anders Broman <[email protected]> wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bálint Réczey > Sent: den 17 april 2014 09:59 > To: Gerald Combs > Cc: Developer support list for Wireshark > Subject: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Wireshark LTS branches > > Hi Gerald, > > 2014-04-17 1:59 GMT+02:00 Gerald Combs <[email protected]>: >> On 4/16/14 3:42 AM, Bálint Réczey wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> Many of you probably know about the Wireshark package [1] in Debian >>> which I started maintaining a few years ago. Like every other package >>> in Debian, the version of Wireshark included in the major >>> distribution release is getting security and stability updates >>> through the lifetime [2] of the major distribution release which is >>> typically 3 years, but it is still shorter than the lifetime of an >>> Ubuntu LTS (5 years) or Red Hat [3] (10 years). >>> >>> Wireshark, the Project, makes a major release every year and >>> according our current policy we support [4] the current and previous >>> release which makes Wireshark releases lifetime 2 years. >>> >>> Wireshark makes point releases after each major release fixing bugs >>> adding minor features and improvements, but only the security and >>> some stability related fixes get included in updates to the Debian package. >>> Since the Debian packages have longer lifetime than Wireshark release >>> I back-port security related fixes to older releases than the project >>> which means that I already maintain two Wireshark branches with >>> security fixes only in the form of patch sets [5]. Other distribution >>> maintainers do the same. >>> >>> Since we moved to Git maintaining the branches became easier and I >>> would like to as the project to allow me to maintain the two existing >>> branches in the projects repository. Going forward I would like to >>> open one similar branch for at least every Debian major release and >>> maintain at least through the major release's lifetime. >>> >>> I think it would not create any significant additional work for the >>> community but it would provide many advantages. >>> >>> 1. We could provide an upgrade path for people focused only on >>> security but not on other improvements keeping the existing release >>> plan. >>> 2. Distribution maintainers could eliminate the duplicate work by >>> collaborating in the LTS branches. >>> 3. Back-ported fixes could get better testing using the existing >>> buildbot infrastructure. >>> 4. Back-ported fixes could be reviewed by more people. >>> >>> One additional note regarding Debian, we (at Debian) are thinking >>> about extending the lifespan of each release to 5 years [7] and this >>> would extend my commitment to maintaining the Wireshark LTS branches >>> naturally. >>> >>> Would the Project be open for the proposed branches? >> >> Overall it sounds fine to me. How many branches would be created and >> how would they be named? > I would like to create two branches forking off from 1.2.11 1.8.2 because > those are the base versions for Debian oldstable and stable. > If others are interested, we could find an LTS forking point for every major > branch, but those are which I maintain already. > > The next could fork off from 1.12.x based on the freeze date for next stable, > which is November 5th. If other distributions are interested we could find a > forking point which would fit their release schedule as well. > > Cheers, > Balint > > Hmm this seems backwards to me, if the distributions don't take the point > releases we make, there is something wrong with our point releases or we > shouldn't be making them in > The first place if no one is using them. Seems like a lot of work for nothing > to me.
This was also my original reaction. We do a fair amount of work (or at least Gerald does quite a lot of work), maintaining stable and old-stable Wireshark branches already. It seems like it would be easier for everybody if we tweaked our stable-backport policy so that Debian and whoever else could just grab new stable versions from us directly. I can't speak for Debian, but Ubuntu has a specific policy for this sort of thing: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates/MicroReleaseExceptions > Should we change our backport policy to fit the distributions need or are > they to different to have a fits all procedure. Perhaps the distribution > should point out which backports to do? > > Best regards > Anders > ___________________________________________________________________________ > Sent via: Wireshark-dev mailing list <[email protected]> > Archives: http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev > Unsubscribe: https://wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev > mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe > ___________________________________________________________________________ > Sent via: Wireshark-dev mailing list <[email protected]> > Archives: http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev > Unsubscribe: https://wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev > mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe ___________________________________________________________________________ Sent via: Wireshark-dev mailing list <[email protected]> Archives: http://www.wireshark.org/lists/wireshark-dev Unsubscribe: https://wireshark.org/mailman/options/wireshark-dev mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
